Silent Hunter UK

One of the most amusing things about Karlovy Vary is its coat of arms.

It's the Bohemian lion having a bath!

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Getting to Karlovy Vary

The city isn't exactly the easiest of places to get to; while there is an airport, it isn't served from many destinations at all and none from the UK. The best option is to fly into Václav Havel Airport Prague and get a coach to the Tržnice (Market Hall) stop, where taxis are available to take you to your accommodation. This takes about 90 minutes and costs under 10 euros with Regiojet.

Don't use Wizzair though. They're awful. Never again.

The city has an attractive main or upper railway station, recently rebuilt with EU funding.

Trains to Prague run every two hours, for a journey time of around three hours, using modern Interjet carriages, with a trolley service provided. There is also a chance you might see one of these:

It's called a RegioMouse!

Part of the M152.0 family of diesel railcars, these were originally built from 1975 to 1982 and are still in use today, with many refurbished and featuring modern amenities like full-colour passenger information screens.

České dráhy (ČD) provide an excellent app in English for purchasing tickets and train information; ticket machines were not present in the stations and while there is a ticket counter available, staff might not speak fluent English.

It is important to note when Karlovy Vary that Czechia does not use the euro, unlike most of its neighbours, but instead the koruna or crown, currently at a rate of around 21.5 koruna to the dollar. Also, the taxis (and quite a few shops) do not take card, so it is advisable to bring some Czech money with you or get it from an ATM at the airport.

The Hotel

I had looked to stay at the Grandhotel Pupp:

However, this was beyond my price range and I merely had a cake from their cafe, off-camera to the left.

Instead, I stayed at the Hotel Imperial, a rather magnificent affair to the south of town, on a half-board basis that proved good value for money.

If your thought is Grand Budapest Hotel; right city, wrong hotel. The inspiration for that was the Hotel Bristol in-town.

This place has two restaurants, two bars and a whole spa/wellness thing... which cost rather a lot for rather little. In the end, I didn't use it at all and instead got my wellness in other ways.

The room I was in was a single one, which had a bath, but no overhead hook for a shower. It also contained a bidet, a novelty for me as British homes don't tend to have them.

Walking

Karlovy Vary is surrounded by mountainous forests and there are extensive paths around it that go up into them. Maps are available, with some of the routes also indicated by paint on the trees.

The paths are generally properly constructed with gravel etc. but be warned that this is not a walk in the park. Some of the ascents can be quite steep and you can easily cover 200 metres up, then 200 metres down in the space of an hour. It can also get a bit chilly as you ascend.

However, you will be treated to some spectacular views.

Over the decades, various chapels and lookout sites have been constructed. The most prominent of these is the Diana Lookout, which is connected to the valley by a funicular railway:

There is a restaurant, a butterfly house that also includes birds and a children's playground.

Speaking of birds, there is also Frosty the peacock. An Indian peafowl with a rare colouring, he very much has the run of the place and will happily display for tourists.

The city centre

The centre of Karlovy Vary is heavily restricted to motor vehicles, with permits required to enter and some of the local parking reserved for a particular vehicle.

There are parking garages etc. in the outskirts, and you can get into the city centre in 10-15 minutes.

The sights

Karlovy Vary is a small and compact place in terms of tourist sites, but there is a fair amount to see.

The area around the River Teplá (which joins the Ohře here) is where the hub of the action is, including the Grandhotel Pupp and a whole slew of high-end shops. The Pupp itself has a cafe that serves a distinctive liquer cake and, amusingly enough, a casino.

There are no less than four colonnades where water from the various hot springs is pumped up and available on tap. People buy special drinking cups with the mouthpiece in the handle and will consume the heated waters from each of the springs.

Personally, I have a somewhat sensitive stomach and declined to imbibe, but I did buy one of the drinking cups from the Karlovy Vary Museum, which is a three-storey affair that covers both regional and local history.

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The Imperial Spa that I discussed in the previous post is now a museum, with various displays on the history of the spa action in the town.

It now features a rather modern concert venue that is frankly only missing Rebecca Ferguson with a sniper rifle:

There are two paintings depicting many of the famous visitors this place has had over the centuries, like the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in painting form.

There is fine artwork in many of the other rooms as well and a highlight of the building has to be the gymnaisum area where people used 19th-century exercise machines; the women in full dresses and corsets!

Unfortunately, no such machines are present or indeed usable.

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The diverse clientele of what was then Karlsbad has seen a variety of churches and chapels constructed to serve various Christian denominations, although these days Czechia itself is pretty non-religious, especially compared to its neighbours.

This is a Russian Orthodox Church that apparently is a meeting point for some of their spies. The interior (photography not allowed) is a tad small for that, mind! In February 2025, ownership was transferred to the Hungarian diocese to prevent an asset seizure.

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One place that Raffles would have recognised from the time is now longer an Anglican Church. Instead of being demolished, it is now home to arguably the worst tourist attraction in the City:

They really don't want photographs taken inside, sticking multiple labels in the interior, so you're going to have to rely on my description as well as a low-resolution photograph from the tourist card website:

This is a museum of low-resemblance waxworks where pop culture has been frozen in the 1990s. If it wasn't for the labels, you would have no idea of who they were supposed to be in many cases. I had to cover my mouth to avoid sniggering and open leaving after ten minutes, I burst into laughter as soon as I was clear.

At least I only paid one crown for the place with the tourist card.

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Karlovy Vary is mostly a place with beautiful architecture that evokes the city's glorious past.

There are some exceptions to that rule though. The tallest building in the city: the Spa Hotel Thermal.

In 1960, the communist government in Czechoslovakia, having been deemed to have achieved socialism, mainly because its leader was very nice to Khruschev, proclaimed a new constitution and renamed the country the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic or ČSSR in both local languages. In the process, the national symbols were changed, and the Bohemian lion had his crown confiscated until 1990.

At the same time, the Karlovy Vary Film Festival was getting increasingly popular and it was decided that a new hub was needed, which in 1963 was expanded to include an international hotel fit for foreign visitors who would be in some cases bringing hard currency with them.

Brutalism was in vogue at the time - after a competition, married couple Věra Machoninová and Vladimír Machonin won the right to design the new building. After clearing an area with a bunch of older buildings in serious disrepair, work started in June 1968. Two months later, the Soviet Union put down the Prague Spring with tanks, starting the "normalisation" period of increased repression and censorship that lasted into 1987... with the building opening in 1977, where it served as a sanatorium for workers in the rest of the time the festival wasn't on.

It remains the main hub for the Film Festival to this day, but with its interiors and exteriors not out of place in an episode of Andor, I can see why many of the red carpet events take place at the Imperial.

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Food and drink

Karlovy Vary has a large collection of eateries to sort your tastes. The Pupp has a cafe next door to it that serves Pupp cake to the original receipe of Johan Georg, made with Becherovka liqueur that is produced in the town.

A particular local speciality is the spa wafer from Mariánské Lázně; these are available for 20 crowns from street vendors, heated on a hot plate.

You can also buy them cold in boxes to take home, but they taste better warm.

Czech is the default language on food packaging etc. learning the words for various fruits etc. will help avoid tastebud surprises or worse.

I ended up coming away with a liking for Birrell non-alcoholic beer and have since been unable to find it at all in the UK, instead relying on other alternatives from British stores.

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Transport

Karlovy Vary is served by an extensive bus network run by DPKV. Tickets can be bought on the bus for a variety of periods, as well as at the tourist office at the Imperial Spa. The Region Card gives you a 50% discount on 24-hour public transport tickets at the latter:

The buses do get busy though and walking is frankly the better option in many cases. Bear in mind that if there are designated pedestrian crossings close by, you should use those to avoid the risk of a ticket for jaywalking.

The main railway station is a bit out of the centre of town, but there is another one slightly closer:

The lower station is a rather different beast to the upper station. A sign of its age is the fact that it has two functioning split-flap passenger information boards, made in Czechoslovakia:

There is also a shop/eatery on the upper floor and the ticket office sells various train-related souvenirs. I bought a pen.

There is a single-line diesel service operated by GWTR going to Mariánské Lázně every two hours, which also serves the city's Arena one stop down the line - a request stop as well.

If you wish to head for other places, hiring a car might be useful, but you should bear in mind that:

A vignette is required for driving on motorways.

They drive on the right.

Headlights must always be on.

The drink-drive limit is zero.

Signage fits the European standard, which is rather different from the American one.

You must stop for any pedestrians on what we British people call a "zebra crossing".

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The tourist scene

Karlovy Vary very much caters for the tourist and can be said to be a quadrilingual city. The Germans have put aside any enmity over the past behind them and flock to the place in droves; my hotel breakfast and dinner was filled with the sound of their language, along with a big information board for a tour group.

It also had two police officers turn up and take a guy away with them, but that's another story.

Indeed, German is a good language to know when dealing with locals. English on the other hand is very hit-and-miss. While extensively present on tourist signs, menus etc. you might not be able to make yourself easily understood and Google Translate will come in handy.

The fourth language of Karlovy Vary is Russian. Russian can be found on many signs - indeed one beauty clinic had its exclusively in Russian. The place has attracted Russian people since the days of Peter the Great and was subject to an oligarch-fuelled property boom after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, Covid (where the Czech government did not accept the Sputnik vaccine for entry purposes) followed by the invasion of Ukraine has meant that the Russians can no longer even get visas to enter the country in most cases, barred by the pro-Western government in Prague. They did however allow in a lot of Ukrainian refugees, many of whom speak Russian, but they do not exactly have the same levels of money on hand.

This does explain the number of estate agent signs I saw around, but getting the property off the Russians is hard due to sanctions.

Health issues

If you have a health situation, as I did, the local hospital proved pretty decent and my GHIC covered the cost of treatment, if not the prescription:

Many of the hotels also have on-site doctors - indeed, some spa treatments require their sign-off - but these can be pricey. Health insurance is strongly recommended.

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Conclusion

Karlovy Vary is a lovely city, with great views, lovely architecture (mostly) and wonderful cuisine. It's definitely good for a short break, although you might run out of things to do after a few days as it isn't that big a place.